Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris@nextbop.com / @retronius

It is quite common for an artist to add a string section onto an album to add depth. No matter what, this undeniably happens-- there are most certainly more people involved making music on this kind of album than usual, the roster is certainly deeper than normal. The sound made by this larger collective is certainly deeper just by the nature of the strings being there. Then there's the notion that there's some greater intellectual depth in the work just because there's a string section, some pseudo-intellectualism as a cloud surrounding that album. The trick to avoiding that cloud is composing to play to the strings' strength, adding their components to one's own compositional style, giving them their own distinct purpose in the overall tableau. Neil Cowley achieves all this and more on his latest album, The Face of Mount Molehill. He composes his songs as he always has, taking his time to paint a larger picture, but this time he's adding a bit more color.